Standoff

We stayed home and did nothing for Memorial Day this year, thinking something low key without the travel and traffic would be good. I don't want to ever do that again! The long weekend just didn't feel special and after it was over I didn't feel like I had had any sort of fun long weekend. I will just have to be more creative about Memorial Day planning from now on.

Only Shot Today

Focus

Tonight I re-learned that it's impossible to take well-composed, artistic, in focus pictures of J while he plays the guitar and sings. So this is the look you get when you say "Stop for a second and look at me." He's been picking up the guitar a lot again lately and we like singing together (most of the time). It's been fun.

Happy Little Cloud

We've been watching a lot of Bob Ross' "The Joy of Painting" on public television lately. Today, when I saw the light hitting just this cloud, just right, I knew he would say it was a happy little cloud. I wish that these wires weren't my view from my front window but they are.

Cool Cats

We spotted these guys while on our neighborhood walk today. I got a sudden desire to yarn-bomb them in the night some time!

Clothesline

Not being used today.

Drunken SP

I had a beautiful landscape today of light spilling through a lush green forest onto some ferns. But when I downloaded the pictures from my card, there were also four self-portraits that I didn't even remember taking! I was so surprised to see myself there. Once I thought about it, I do remember doing these in the ladies restroom of a bar (vaguely). I like whatever that animal shape is on the glass that's going through my eye. I also tried flipping it back (so the Nikon would read correctly) but I didn't look right to myself so I left it this way. Perhaps this is because I always see myself in mirrors and think "this is how I look"?! In the end, it wasn't much contest between this and some lighted up old ferns in the forest.

Hot Pink Post

This bush (is this a rhododendron?) is impossibly hot pink this year and today after some lovely rain I just couldn't resist photographing it. These are absolutely straight out of camera, not one thing touched in the slightest.

Ridiculous

Cutest. Cat. Ever.

Happy

He will swear that this was just another phone call and that he wasn't particularly happy or excited about it. But I know his face. This is a happy face. It's a good day today and very hopeful for the future.

100

Today my Aunt Lelia celebrated her 100th birthday which was on May 19th. I really wish I could have been there to celebrate with her but I wasn't. My mom took these pictures and shared them with me and I felt this was a special enough occasion to use them in my journal even though I didn't click the shutter. There just aren't that many recent photographs that we have of her and a 100th Birthday is such a special occasion. I want to be able to have these portraits in my journal forever to look back on. She wrote me a lovely letter to thank me for sending cards, flowers, and balloons for her birthday. I love her very much and which I could see her more often.

Garden Report

Today I put in the vegetable garden in the fron yard. It's very small but it's what I felt I could manage this year without getting my heart broken. I have four tomato plants (two from Lowe's, two from the Farmer's Market). I planted 6 seedlings for sugar snap peas, and I've never grown peas or anything that requires a trellis before so I built this slightly ghetto trellis (I added more twine later). The last box contains carrots, something I have also not grown before. I feel a little like I am cheating with the carrots since I bought plant starts of a mini variety that doesn't need much depth. For all I know there are carrots in the right now and nothing I do will change whether they grow or not. The "underground" plants are fun to grow because they are such a mystery. Are they in there? Are they doing well? Who knows?!

Naptime

All three of my boys were sleepy today. (Fergus is at the other end of the couch.)

The Green Sofa

The orange sofa (which has been "the orange sofa" for my entire life) is now the green sofa. The 30+ year old fabric had held up surprisingly well but the foam and everything inside was desintigrating and it becoming dangerous to sit on. Now it has a whole new lease on life. I learned from the upholsterer, who took it down to the frame, that it was in fact handmade, not manufactured and is therefore probably even older than we thought. I love the new look and think it does justice to the original.

The Green Sofa

It's very exciting to announce that the orange sofa (which has been "the orange sofa" for my entire life) is now the green sofa. The 30+ year old fabric had held up surprisingly well but the foam and everything inside was desintigrating and it becoming dangerous to sit on. Now it has a whole new lease on life and perhaps someday my kids will be recovering it to some godawful new fabric. I learned from the upholsterer, who took it down to the frame, that it was in fact handmade, not manufactured and is therefore probably even older than we thought. Of course, I am now going to cover it in plastic and not let anyone sit on it.

1500

You probably haven't been counting, but I have, and this is my 1500th photo-of-the-day. I can hardly believe that I've made it to this milestone. I still remember the day (dreary, November 29th, 2006) that I started this project. I had no way of knowing how it would change my life. In other news, today is the birthday of my mother and my great Aunt, who is actually turning 100 years old today.

Mystery Photos!

This is one of my favorite things and unfortunately in this day and age it doesn't happen very often any more: Mystery Photos! It used to happen when you'd take a long lost roll of film in to be developed and then you'd get to be surprised by what photos came back because you had forgotten taking them so many moons ago. I was trying to get some Hawaii images off of Michelle's point and shoot this week and I found these photos from last summer that I don't remember seeing (although, with me it's possible that I don't remember seeing them and they are in fact already on this blog or Michelle's blog). But anyways, it was great fun to see this little series from a fun night so long ago.

Abstract

An abstract of some concrete at the Sculpture Garden. This is about 20 feet up, looking straight down on the entrance to the parking garage.

Rad Self-Portrait

If I do say so myself... This is often how I entertain myself when people are late meeting me. The Sculpture Garden has really cool bathrooms with really cool light. Plus, I think I was having a good hair day today.

Syttende Mai

Our neighborhood is still an old Norwegian fishing village at heart (which is one of the reasons I love living here) so it's only natural that thousands would turn out on a Tuesday night to watch a two-hour-long hometown Syttende Mai parade! (The 17th of May, celebrating Norwegian Constitution Day) There were marching bands, and 100s of kids on unicycles (who knew that was a craze?), dogs and children dressed up. It was fantastic! Michelle and I sat on a sunny corner and took in the spectacle. Next year we will stake out our seats along the main parade route in the morning like so many families do.

Cheeky Squirrel

He's very crafty this little bugger. When he wants to he can curl up sideways on the lip of the feeder and eat while reclining. Here he is holding on to the branch with his back feet!

Basket

We went to the Farmer's Market today for the first time in a long time. It's very expensive so we have to be very careful about picking exactly which things are the right combination of price and importance. In an ideal world...blah blah blah...we'd all have organic locally grown foods, in glass and metal containers, that are also at a comparable price to what we can buy in the store. But, for now, budget and packaging still have to factor into each and every grocery purchase. I enjoyed carrying around my purchases in my market basket though. We also found a pottery maker that we adored so we may be picking and choosing a few of his items for our home someday.

Shifty

Shifty went to the spa today to get the necessary treatment to get her from "stored in the shed all winter" to "ride-able for the summer". She got new tires, new cables and housings, new brake pads, and a new bottom bracket that will hopefully make her not-quite-so-"shifty". Looking forward to getting back out there.

The Shit You Can't Make Up

See, yeah, this is the shit you just can't make up about Hawaii. This is almost exactly straight out of camera. It really really did look like that. Insane, right? It's pretty much my favorite color, in liquid form, that you just want to dive right into. (except for the huge scary wave). The second morning, we were briefly blessed with some quite frankly AMAZING sunshine. We went to explore the beaches between our place in Hanalei and where the road ends at Ke'e beach. It was lovely to walk here (Tunnels Beach) but you can see why I didn't get to go snorkeling just yet.

Rainbow

At least a rainbow came out to make us feel better. We returned to our cool little rental guest house and cooked ourselves some dinner and went to bed. It rained all night and with all the windows open and the tropical birds chirping...it seriously sounded a real live jungle rainforest nature sounds tape!

Cover

Here's J taking cover under some trees on the beach. Note the rain on his t-shirt. Note the now-obscured view on the beach.

Rain!

Yes, that's rain. You try getting a good picture of it while trying not to soak your camera with the fancy lens you borrowed from a friend. Out of nowhere a huge downpour began and we had to run off the beach to take cover under some trees. We were laughing and it was all great fun...ah, the first hours of vacation when even a freak rainstorm can seem all part of the adventure!

Hanalei II

Until...the weather started to change. It was still looking pretty nice and all "Ah, Hawaii!" like here...until...

Hanalei, HI

After a long day of traveling, we finally arrived in the lovely little town of Hanalei on the north shore of Kauai. If I had known the weather that we were about to have, I would have sped from the airport, directly to Ke'e beach and jumped in the water to go snorkling asap. We were tired though so we settled for a walk along this beach until...

Vacation J

We are off today for a much-anticipated vacation to Kauai. It coincides with our 5 year wedding anniversary (How could it possibly be 5 years?) but it was mostly because our winter was so wet and terrible that if I didn't get a sunny beach vacation soon it was going to get very ugly (more on that later). Plane windows and their lovely window light always do really nice things for J's eyes so I grabbed a quick snap of him wearing my vacation cowboy hat before we took off. This was a very long day of traveling.

For the moment I am just going to skip blogging the month of April and try to get caught up through our vacation.

Ballard Docks

We went on a walk around our neighborhood tonight and took a new "backway" to Market St. through the old fishing docks. Armed with nothing but my phone, I created this diptych which I think is pretty cool.